DataChats

DataChats is a new show where we interview influential people in the data science community and ask them about how they got started in the field, what their favorite techniques and tools are and what they think the next big thing will be.

All DataChats

In this episode of DataChats, Nick talks with Max Kuhn, the creator of the caret package for R. Max is a frequent speaker at many of the main data science conferences and is well known as the creator of the caret package for R, an essential tool in every R user’s machine learning toolbox.
In this 30 min conversation, Max talks about how he originally wanted to become a journalist, why he defines himself as a statistician rather than a data scientist, his thoughts on deep learning, strategies for breaking into the field, and much more.

Justin Bois is a lecturer in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He teaches nine different classes there, nearly all of which heavily feature Python. He is dedicated to empowering students in the biological sciences with quantitative tools, particularly data analysis skills.
Beyond biologists, he is thrilled to develop courses for DataCamp. In this DataChat, Hugo and Justin discuss different aspects of data science, including data science education, and Justin shares his advice to those getting started in the field.

Chester builds (and helps instructors build) R and SQL courses for DataCamp. Chester has experience working as an actuary, as a professor, and as a statistical/data scientist consultant in academia. In addition, he has worked as a consultant for actuarial firms and the Portland Trailblazers NBA team. He is co-author of the fivethirtyeight R package and author of the thesisdown R package. He is also a co-author of ModernDive, an open source textbook for introductory statistics and data science students using R.

Brett Lantz is a data scientist at the University of Michigan and the author of Machine Learning with R. After training as a sociologist, Brett has applied his endless thirst for data to projects that involve understanding and predicting human behavior.

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DataCamp offers interactive R and Python courses on topics in data science, statistics, and machine learning. Learn from a team of expert teachers in the comfort of your browser with video lessons and fun coding challenges.